


The Owl

by 8611



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Animal Transformation, Historical Inaccuracy, M/M, Shapeshifting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-22
Updated: 2012-11-22
Packaged: 2017-11-19 06:31:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/570242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/8611/pseuds/8611
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The owl keeps his forest, and everything inside of it, safe. Even a pack of wolves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Owl

**Author's Note:**

> this is set in sort of a fantasy, vaguely ancient version of sorta central Europe. Ish. Sorry about that. Also, the owl in question is Stiles, everyone else should be easy to figure out.

For a while, it is only the owl's forest. By and large, he is fine with this. He ranges wide, eyes seeing everything, but nothing stirs except for little things like mice and voles. Once, a butterfly floats past his beak when the day is slipping into night and he is just stirring, and its beauty surprises him for a moment. But mostly, he is the only being in the forest who knows about the trees, and the wind, and universe. To keep his mind busy he spends time writing with his talons on the soft wood of the trees after it rains, spelling out works in languages he should not, but somehow does, know. He tells the story of the forest for the trees, for anyone who would come and find it. He doesn't know how he knows any of this, but sometimes the wind will whisper to him - _guardian_. 

From time to time the owl will slip from his perch, and when he hits the ground, he does so on sure human feet, trading his tiny body with fragile bones for pale skin and a mantle of his own brown feathers draped across his shoulders. He doesn't feel the cold, but he likes to keep his feathers about his body, even as a human. He enjoys the feeling of digging his toes into the dirt, through the dead leaf cover on the ground, and he will turn his (still wide, always wide) eyes up to the sky and just smile at the night. The stars will always smile back, he knows. He likes to run through the forest on two feet just as much as he likes to glide through it on two wings. 

The roe deer and red fox are the first two to appear, one bright and windy day. The owl watch them curiously, head cocked, eyes round. He clicks his beak and his claws as he watches them, flying from tree to tree to keep sight of them. Suddenly, it is no longer just the owl's forest. He will have to share it. 

He watches them, and then that night he glides down on silent wings to a rotting, mossy log near where they have settled for the night, legs bent under them. The deer has her head turned away, but the fox watches him, her eyes as sharp as his. Her tail sweeps the pine needles, wary. 

"Hello," he says, because he doesn't know what else to say. The voles and the mice, while tasty, have never been very good conversationalists. "I'm Owl." 

"You are _an_ owl," the fox corrects. "It's not your name."

The owl just blinks at her, suddenly aware that he lacks a name. The deer turns towards them, her ears flicking the last lazy flies of the day away. 

"You don't have a name, do you?" the deer asks. 

"I - I do," the owl says, puffing out his little chest. But he stutters and stops because no one had ever thought to give him a name. One day he just Was, and no one was there on that day to name him. 

"I had to name myself," the fox replies smartly. "Most of us do. I am of the coast of Lydia, and so I am Lydia." 

"I'm from -" the owl casts around. "I'm from the forest. Here, nowhere else. My forest was never named either." 

"My herd has a map," the deer says, and the owl marvels at the word _herd_ , a group. A family. "When they come, we'll find the name of your forest, and then you can name yourself." 

"Who are you?" The owl asks. 

"My family called me Adelais when I was born," the deer says. "We're born human."

"Don't worry," the fox - _Lydia_ , he tells himself - says. "I'm like you." 

He knows he is the reverse of Adelais, born not from a family but out of the air, and made of tiny brown and grey feathers and these wide yellow eyes. His choice to walk on human feet came later, when he heard whispers from the wind that humans were moving across the plains and into the hills around his forest. However, they had yet to come. Once a human had come and knocked on one of his trees, as far out as his trees would go, but the owl had not responded and he had gone away, a bow hitched on back. 

"Do you watch the forest?" Adelais asks. "Keep it from harm?"

"There's nothing here to cause harm," the owl says. "Only me, and some small creatures." 

"Do you watch over them?" Lydia asks. 

"I, uh," the owl says, scrapping one talon against the wood guiltily. "I eat them."

The deer stares back, her ears flicking wildly. 

"There's nothing wrong with that," Lydia says, and settles her head on her paws, eyes closing. "If there's nothing here that can eat _me_ , I say we sleep. We came a long way." 

"Why did you come?" the owl asks. 

"The animals are moving. Humans are coming. And there are wolves in the night," Adelais says. "My family stays with the wolves, as much as we can."

The owl does not see what is so wrong with wolves, and he stares at the deer, head tilted. 

"Sleep," the fox yawns. 

"I sleep during the day," the owl says. He's always liked the night better.

The deer and the fox have already drifted off though, and so the owl takes flight quietly. He spends the night ghosting around the far edges of the forest, staring as long as hard as possible into the fields and hills that surround him, but he doesn't see anything. No humans, no animals. No wolves. 

And yet, the wind whispers. 

_Guardian, this is your forest. Let it come to no harm._

The owl tucks his beak against his chest, and after a moment, he promises the wind that nothing bad will happen. He doesn't want anything bad to happen. This is his home. These trees are his family. They are his herd and pack. 

\---

When he finds the deer and the fox in the morning it is because they have lit a fire. He starts at the rising smoke, and zips through the trees, guided like an arrow, his heart thudding in his chest. He's failed already, something is wrong, and it is because he wasn't watching closely. 

But what he finds is a few green twigs smoking, and two young women sitting across each other from the fire. One is pale and has red curls tumbling down her back, a gauzy dress following the lines of her body. The other has dark hair and warm eyes, and her leathers, boots and bow call to mind the hunter who had knocked on his forest those years ago. 

"How was your night?" The girl with the red curls asks, and the owl abruptly realizes that this is Lydia and Adelais. 

"Fine," the owl squeaks when she turns to smile at him. As a fox she had just looked like a fox. As a human she is beautiful. 

"Join us?" Adelais asks, and for a moment the owl is stuck staring at Lydia in this early morning light. 

"You do have a human shape, don't you?" Lydia asks. 

"Of course!" He says, and he nearly tumbles over his own two feet in a haste to cover himself in that pale skin and soft mantle. He does add a simple linen tunic though, suddenly self-conscience to be seen mostly naked in front of the two. He fusses with the leather belt as he sits down cross-legged between the two, peaking up at Lydia from time to time. 

"You're young," Adelais says. "For a guardian, anyway. I expected you to be a grizzled old man."

"There are more of me?" The owl asks, confused. 

"Didn't anyone tell you?" Lydia asks. "You should know these things."

"Sorry," the owl mumbles, ducking his head and suddenly wishing that he had his plumage to hide in. "Is that what you are?"

"I was," Lydia says, and there is a hard edge to her voice. "It was taken from me by worms and snakes, I had a field of beautiful purple and blue flowers that kept the wolves out." 

"You should get it back," the owl says, suddenly fierce, sitting up straighter. "I'll help."

"That time is past," Lydia says, voice hard. She leaves no room for argument, abruptly turning to Adelais and changing topic. "She's a shifter."

"Not a wolf though," Adelais is quick to correct. "Just a shifter." 

Slowly, the owl is aware that, for the second time ever, someone is knocking. He listens carefully, and in a moment he has shifted (he is dully aware of calls of question from behind him) and is sailing through his trees. They seem to part for him, and when he gets to the edge of the forest he sees that there is a man standing with a hand on one of the trees, looking around. He is all hard lines and dark furs that do little to hide how large he is. There is something strange about this man - he looks human, but there is something animal coiled under that flat surface. 

He does not know what to do with the man. The wind is silent, and offers no help. 

Carefully, cautiously, the owl offers up a quite little hoot, and when the wind still says nothing, he tries louder this time. The man looks up at him suddenly, and for one brief moment his eyes are red and the owl is sure that he has made a terrible mistake. However, the red is gone as fast as it had come. 

"May we pass?" The man asks, and he sounds almost as if he is growling. 

"Will you keep my forest safe?" The owl asks, standing up as tall and as wide as his little body can. 

"We will," the man says. The owl doesn't see a lie in his eyes.

"Alright," the owl says. "You can come in." 

The man turns around and whistles, and others seem to suddenly materialize out of the low bushes and from behind rocks, five of them all together. That seems like a lot of people, and the owl frowns. He'll watch them closely, that's for sure. 

"That's the guardian?" The lone woman in the group scoffs, sneering at him. The owl glares back, ruffling his feathers. 

"He's kind of tiny," another one of the group says, grinning with a mouth of teeth that are incredibly sharp. 

The owl decides that he won't stand for this. He may be kind of tiny, but he can be just as ferocious as he wants to be. By the time he hits the ground on human feet, he has added rough armor from his trees and he carries a staff. 

"If you want to insult me you can turn around," the owl says, squaring his shoulders. 

"Ignore them," the leader says, turning around to growl at the others. It seems to make them all shrink back just a bit. "We mean no harm."

"I hope so," the owl says. There is a sudden noise of breaking twigs and underbrush and he turns around to see a deer and a fox come leaping out of the trees, just for a moment, and then one of them is Adelais, the air twisting and fogging in front of her outstretched arms to form a bow, solid and real in her hands, an arrow already notched. 

"Adelais!" Lydia says, a hand on her shoulder, red hair angry and mussed from her run. 

"They're wolves," Adelais says, her bow steady and deadly. "I won't let them in."

"It's not your choice," the owl points out. "And then don't look much like wolves."

"Oh, they will be," Adelais promises. 

"They promised no harm," the owl says. 

"They'll break that promise," Adelais says. 

"And if they do, Owl can kill them if he sees fit," Lydia says, flicking some of her hair over her shoulder. "This is his forest." 

The owl turns to look at Lydia and Adelais, confused. He supposes as a guardian he must have some power, but this? The power of death? That's not a power the owl is sure he wants. 

Adelais has not lowered her bow. The owl reaches out and touches the back of her hand, just briefly. She looks at him, and for a moment he's sure that she's going to turn the bow on him instead, but she finally lowers it. 

"It'll be fine," the owl says. "I won't let anyone hurt anyone in here."

And just like that, one owl has become a forest full of creatures. 

\---

Adelais remains uneasy, even though one of the wolves has taken to sitting on logs near her and smiling at her, boyish in his human shape with floppy hair and sun kissed skin. Sometimes she'll even offer a half a smile back, but she keeps up a wall. 

The wolves leave the forest to hunt for bigger game every few days, but return in the evening. The big one, the leader - Dederick - even comes back one night with a mountain goat slung across his shoulders, its white fur stained with blood from where someone has sliced its throat and drained it. 

"You shouldn't do that," Adelais says. "Those goats belong to the mountains."

"The mountains are too savage to have a guardian," Dederick says, and shrugs as he drops the goat near the fire. Instantly two of his pack are on it, although like this, with human hands and human brains, they instead take to skinning it with knives that flash in the light of the fire. 

The owl has only ever had mouse and vole, little things he thanks the forest for, but he has to admit that tearing into the leg of a roasted goat tastes somewhat better. 

The wolves sleep around the fire every night, curled up as animals, their noses tucked under their tails. Sometimes Lydia will slink into their circle and curl up near one of the wolves in particular, between his body and the fire. She seems to like the warmth even more than the wolves. 

The owl watches carefully, but he does not see anything out of the ordinary (except of course that his forest is suddenly full of others). The wolf who has taken a liking to Adelais will talk to him sometimes as well, grinning out from under his loose curls. 

"I'm Scoti," he says on the first day that they talk. It is night again, and the fire makes satisfying cracking noises as the flames jump into the dark sky. 

"I - you can call me Owl," the owl says. Lydia and Adelais do anyway, and until he learns the name of his forest, he thinks it suits him fine. 

"Dederick said that we shouldn't bother you, but Lydia and Adelais do."

"I like talking, it's fine. I spent a long time alone, and the mice didn't do a lot of talking."

"The mice talk?" Scoti looks surprised.

"No," the owl laughs. "It was a joke."

Scoti is not always the very best at getting his jokes, and sometimes the owl wonders if they have a different breed of humor wherever Scoti is from. 

"Can I ask you something?" Scoti asks. 

"Why not?"

"Do you think Adelais really hates wolves like she says?"

The owl looks over at Adelais, who is glued to Lydia's side across the fire from them. For a moment the owl stares at Lydia instead, the way her hair looks like copper in the light, the way it makes her eyes spark. But then his view drifts to Jackin, who is on Lydia's other side and smiling at her as he tugs on one of her curls. Every night they sleep a little bit close together, and somehow the owl already knows that he's fighting a loosing battle. He barely knows what it means to be a guardian, and when he is human he is not strong and perfectly confident like Jackin is. 

"Uh," the owl says, looking back at Scoti. "I don't know."

"I hope she'll change her mind," Scoti says, and rests his chin in his hands, suddenly oblivious to the owl. He'll notice in the coming days, weeks, that many of their conversations are derailed by Adelais and her hypothetical feelings about wolves. One day, when it’s raining and they’re hunkered under a rocky outcropping, the owl even suggests that Scoti just ask her about what she’s thinking. 

“Do what?” Scoti asks, his mouth hanging open. “Just… _ask her_?”

“It makes sense,” the owl says. 

“No it doesn’t,” Scoti says. “She’ll bite my head off. I can’t just ask her how she feels about wolves, or me, or whoever.”

“But you want to know, don’t you?”

“Yeah, but not by asking her!”

“That _doesn’t_ make sense,” the owl grouses, kicking his feet out so that they stick out past the rock. The rain is cool on his skin, and he watches the water bead and collect in the hollows of his feet and toes. 

“It’ll just,” Scoti makes a frustrated noise and some abortive hand gestures. “It’ll work itself out.”

“Uh huh,” the owl says, giving Scoti a pat on the back. “You just keep believing that.” 

“I will, thank you very much.”

“What ever happened to good old communication?”

“Communication is horrible.”

“And handy.”

“And _horrible_.”

The owl decides that either Scoti is very stubborn, or that this whole ‘not talking’ thing is a very human characteristic. It’s probably a bit of both at the end of the day. 

\---

He gets to know each one of the wolves, in bits and pieces. Jackin is constantly coiled tight and sniffing the wind, and there is something like fear in his gut that he paves over with sharp smiles and taunts. The owl doesn’t like Jackin much, he was the one who had suggest that he was rather tiny when they first met. Also, Lydia will twine their fingers together some days and the owl will glare from his perch where he's followed them to eavesdrop. (He tells himself that he has to know what's going on in his forest to keep it safe, after all.)

Scoti longs for home and Adelais. Both of them seem unobtainable though, so the owl just offers him pats on the back and an ear to listen. 

Boid is steady and even and always ready to wrap his arms around the uneven and sharp edges of Eiríka, who's blonde curls are almost more impressive than Lydia's (although not quite) but do little to hide the hurt in her eyes. 

Isaak has that hurt too, and if the owl looks close enough he can see it in all the wolves' eyes. They are a pack bound by what they have lost, loss replaced by one another. 

Dederick remains somewhat of a mystery. Sometimes the owl will squint at him across the fire and try to know who and where he has come from, but it's useless. He starts going on nightly runs, after his pack is asleep, and the owl goes with him. He'll fly silently directly above him, tracing the path he takes on the ground in the air. Dederick never takes notice of him, and the owl isn't sure if it's because he is actually unknown to Dederick, or if it's because the wolf doesn't care enough to acknowledge him. As the nights pass and Dederick continues to ignore him the owl begins to think that somehow he just is that silent and that he hasn't been noticed. 

The runs always make him settle down to sleep with a satisfied little warmth, beak tucked into his feathers and the wolves and Lydia and Adelais asleep below him. 

\---

Lydia knows more about being a guardian than he does, evidently. She tells him about all the things she did to keep her meadow safe, and how in the end it didn’t keep everything out. She walks through the woods, skirts trailing on the ground, touching each tree in turn, just a tiny tap with her fingertips, the owl trailing behind her as she tells her story. Lydia doesn’t do a lot of talking to him, but they’re cut from the same cloth, and she seems to take some kind of comfort in it. 

“Not all the wolves are bad, you know,” she says. She has her curls up today, secured by a headband of tiny yellow flowers that grow around the edges of the forest. There are freckles on her collarbone, and they make the owl’s fingers twitch, wanting to reach out and touch them. He inspects his nails instead, pulling dirt from under them so that he has something to keep his hands busy. 

“They actually seem pretty friendly to me,” the owl says. “Well, mostly. They’re all a bit sharp around the edges. And Dederick may or may not be planning on ripping our throats out while we sleep.”

“No,” Lydia laughs. “Dederick seems a bit too hapless for that.”

The owl doesn’t think Dederick is hapless at all, but he’s not all bite either. 

“Oh, and Jackin is kind of a jerk,” the owl says, and he sees a flash in Lydia’s eyes. 

“He’s… has has some issues to work out,” she says simply. 

“Uh huh,” the owl says. “Issues like being kind of a jerk.”

Lydia purses her lips and starts walking again, tapping each of the trees. 

“There was a girl who fell in love with a wolf once,” Lydia says. “She shouldn’t have, but he tricked her by coming to her as a handsome young warrior with the promise of love. But he could take many shapes, and he became a snake to drive her away from her home. And so she was left heartbroken to wander the world, waiting for the warrior to come back.”

“But he was a wolf,” the owl points out. In his head he imagines the scene – the girl with the warrior resting his head in her lap, smiling as she strings petals together from a meadow of purple flowers so that she can put them in the warrior’s hair. Somehow, they look like Lydia and Jackin, and the owl feels like he’s not too far off in that assumption. 

“Wolves are capable of love,” Lydia says fiercely. “Besides, the story has a happy ending.” 

“Oh?”

“Yes, it turns out that the warrior was being controlled by an evil spirit and a group of wolves came and turned him from snake to wolf and now the meadow is alone and I’m here and Jackin and I have a second chance and I can go home one day.” Lydia’s hands are balled into fists by the end of this. 

The owl is very astute sometimes. He gives himself a mental pat on the back. 

Lydia clears her throat and straightens up, tucking some of her hair behind her ear and straightening her dress. 

“Don’t write them all off, is what I’m saying,” she says, voice much more even than it was a second ago. 

“Nope, would never dream of it,” the owl assures her. 

When they return to the fire circle Adelais is sitting on the side of the fire with the wolves for once, even smiling and laughing. Scoti is hanging on her every word, leaning so far forward that the owl wonders if he’s going to pitch off the log and straight into the fire. 

The owl has no doubt that the wolves are capable of love, considering how very human they are. He props his chin up on his hands and listens to the conversation (Scoti is describing the city he’s from, a place where the seas met, a city on seven hills that glitters like the water at sunset) and is somewhat surprised when he realizes that he’s not staring at Lydia across the fire, like usual, but at Dederick instead.

\---

The cool summer becomes a much cooler fall as the leaves start to float from the trees, a brittle and dry carpet for the forest floor. The wolves crunch through them as they come and go, and the owl is surprised to see Adelais going out to hunt with them one day, very human and armed with her bow. 

She has her hand anchored in the fur at the back of Scoti's neck, and the owl boggles for a moment, nearly falling from his perch in a sleepy haze. After they've left the owl assumes he's dreamed it all up, but when the wolves come back, human now, Scoti and Adelais are holding hands, fingers clasped. 

"How?" He asks Lydia, and she just raises her eyes, smiling a private little smile, offering nothing more. 

They burn the leaves some nights and the air smells different, warm and smoky. Most nights the owl and Dederick still go running (flying), their routine unchanged until one night the wolf stops in the middle of the forest, sits on his haunches, and stares right up at the owl. He nearly tumbles out of the air and makes a hasty landing, peaking over the branch at Dederick. He's still staring up at him. 

"Are you following me to keep me out of trouble?" Dederick asks. 

"No," the owl says. "I just... enjoy it."

"Flying? I thought you'd be bored of that."

"Having someone to fly with. My forest has been empty for as long as I can remember."

They sit there for a few long moments, staring at each other, Dederick's eyes red and the owl's wide and yellow, as always. The others change their eyes between human and wolf, or human and deer, but Lydia and he keep theirs no matter whom they chose to be that day, or hour, or even moment. 

"You don't talk much," the owl says suddenly. "Almost less than the mice."

"The mice don't talk."

"Exactly."

"I'm talking now."

The owl has to admit that Dederick has a point. They’re silent again, and the owl fidgets a bit, digging his talons into the cool wood of the branch. 

“You know what Adelais’ family is, correct?” Dederick is the one to break the silence this time. “Hunters?”

“I do,” the owl said. He’d parsed it out of conversation.

“And you know they’re coming to hunt us?”

The owl bobs his head in a sort of nod motion. It’s more difficult as an owl than a human. 

“Don’t worry, I won’t let anything bad happen in my forest. I meant that.”

Dederick gives him a long hard look, and then he gets up, whips the dead leaves out of his tail, and lopes off, leaving the owl to follow a few seconds later. 

\---

A cold week later, the wind tells him that Adelais’ family has made it to the small village that humans have started building not far from the forest. The owl braces himself for any possible danger, but they don’t come right away. They don’t come for a while, in fact. 

Adelais has to spend her time in the village now, although at night Scoti sneaks off, head held low, to presumably meet her. The owl watches, but he doesn’t intervene. If Scoti wants to be stupid, the owl is not going to stop him. As much as the owl has taken a liking to Scoti. The owl had always thought that wolves were supposed to be ferocious and deadly, but Scoti really seems quite fluffy and friendly. 

Then again, owls are supposed to be wise and quiet, and the owl isn’t exactly wise and he’s certainly _not_ quiet. He’s grown to enjoy time with his new friends around the fire at night. He doesn’t have any of his own stories to tell, but he still has things to talk about. 

“How come you don’t talk about your family, Owl? Or tell us your name?” Isaak asks one night, when it’s cold enough that in their human forms the wolves are all wrapped in fur capes. The cold seems to bother Lydia as little as it bothers the owl, and she is still wearing her gauzy dress, almost the same color as her pale skin. It makes the red of her lips and the copper of her hair beautiful, and the owl keeps sneaking glances at her. 

(The owl does not like Jackin for reasons that may or may not have to do with the fact that he has Lydia wrapped up in his cloak with him.)

“I don’t have either,” the owl says. “I just existed one day and no one thought to name me.”

“Everyone has a family,” Boid says, rubbing his hands together and then holding them out for the fire to warm. 

“Not me,” the owl says. “I’m a lone owl. Out on my own. You know, all that.”

“Oh yes, you’re a badass,” Dederick says.

“I am,” the owl says sagely. “Just you wait, one day a bear will wander by and you’ll be glad you have me and my fury on your side.”

“You don’t have any fury,” Lydia laughs.

“Wings of fury, you’ll see,” the owl says. “Er, fists. Fists of fury.”

The wolves get a kick out of this, but he is grateful that Lydia attempts to disguise her laugh as a cough. Lydia understands him. Well, at least to a certain degree. 

Eiríka spends the rest of the night entertaining the others with stories of long ships and the weapons she would help her father make at his forge, but the owl mostly watches Dederick, watches the way that he stares at each one of his pack in tern for long moments, as if to assure himself that they’re still there. His skin is dull orange in the firelight, the same color as the leaves that blanket the floor. More leaves fall every night, and there is a nip in the wind that the owl knows means that there will be snow soon. 

Eventually Dederick gets up for his run and the owl follows him as always, enjoying the chill of the air through his feathers. The fir trees still have their green needles, but the rest of the trees are mostly bare, their bark grey and their branches empty. The owl has always enjoyed this time of year, the cusp between two seasons. He can’t wait for the first snows to fall and cover the leaves. 

He’s surprised when, for the second time ever, Dederick stops about midway through their run, perched on the ancient roots of a massive tree, one of the oldest in the forest. 

“Come down here,” he says. 

“If you’re planning on eating me, the others might notice,” the owl says. 

“I’m not going to eat you,” Dederick says. He looks slightly insulted. “You’re too feathery, anyway.”

“Hey, my feathers are beautiful,” the owl says, puffing and primping a bit. His feathers are starting to turn white in places, the same as every winter, making him more like the snow and less like the fallen leaves. 

“Just come down here,” Dederick says, and suddenly he is human, sitting on the same root as before, his cloak wrapped around his body. 

The owl sighs and drops from the branch, landing on the ground on human feet. 

“Aren’t you freezing?” Dederick asks. 

“I don’t get cold,” the owl says, shrugging. “Maybe I’m more advanced.”

“Or you’re really weird.”

“That is also a possible explanation.”

“You’re still like ten feet away from me. Am I scaring you?”

“No, you’re confusing me. We have an unwritten code. Go running – or, er, flying – and don’t talk. Except for that one time with the cryptic warning about Adelais’ family, which was just as odd as right now.”

“A code?”

“You gotta follow the code, Dederick.” 

Dederick holds out a hand in answer, palm up, skin pale in the moonlight. The owl raises his eyebrows, but he walks over, feet almost silent, and takes the hand Dederick has offered up. 

“Now what?” The owl asks.

“Just trust me,” Dederick says, and pulls him closer in, until they’re a single breath apart, so close that the owl swears he can hear Dederick’s heartbeat. There’s a second where the owl is wondering if Dederick is actually going to eat him, and then he does something else with his mouth entirely. 

Dederick kisses him. This is giant surprise number one. Giant surprise number two is that the owl doesn’t mind. He melts against Dederick, holding his face in his hands as Dederick pulls him into his lap. 

“Your cloak-“ it’s hard to talk in complete sentences when you’re being kissed, “is in – the way!”

Dederick growls and scrambles with the cording at his neck a little too viciously, snapping the material and sending the cloak falling from his shoulders. The owl laughs and pushes Dederick back, so that they land on top of the cloak in the hollow of two roots, held together by the tree.

While it’s easy to will his tunic and mantle away, it’s somewhat more difficult to peel Dederick out of all the clothes he wears. However the owl is rewarded when he finds that there are intricate, swirling black designs stretching across Dederick’s chest, over his shoulders, and vanishing down his back. 

“What are these?” the owl asks, fascinated, as he traces one with his finger. 

“Memories from home,” Dederick says, and the owl explores them with his fingers, and then his mouth, and smiles against Dederick’s skin when he tries to grab him by his hair (too short). Dederick’s hands scrabble across the owl’s unmarked skin, finally settling in a vice grip on his hips, and he doesn’t mind the pressure. 

When Dederick wraps a hand around both of them the owl gasps, eyelids fluttering like wings, and he grips the root above their heads, holding it like Dederick held his hips, pulling pieces of bark off under a grip that he didn’t know was so strong. 

They shudder and shake and roll together, hips and hands and mouths, and by the time they’re both spent the owl’s knees are raw and his lips bitten, and Dederick has some impressive scratches across his tattoos, but neither of them mind. Dederick pulls him in, and they tuck themselves together, Dederick pulling the cloak over both of them. The fur smells like a mix of Dederick and the forest, and the owl buries his face in the crook of Dederick’s neck and just breaths in, eyes shut, Dederick’s hands wandering up and down the owl’s back. 

When they wake in the morning, just after the sun has spilled over the mountains, the first snow is falling from a red-grey sky. 

\---

They don’t fly or run back to the fire circle, they walk together, human, shoulders brushing. Dederick might be broader, more muscled, but they’re almost the same height. The owl supposes he could change that if he wanted to, this is just the shape he’s chosen, he wasn’t born into a human body like the wolves or Adelais, but he likes this one. It feels as natural as when he’s an owl. 

The snow is coming down silently, already collecting on the leaves and the branches. The owl enjoys the feeling of patches of it below his bare feet, he digs his toes in and smiles at the feeling. He missed winter. 

Dederick stays bundled up in his furs and leather, just raising an eyebrow when the owl stops to bend down and collect a ball of snow in his hands. 

“What’s that for?” Dederick asks. 

“Oh, just this,” the owl says, and then smashes it against the side of Dederick’s head with an open palm. 

“What did you – Owl, what –“ Dederick is sputtering, trying to get the snow out of his hair and off his cloak. He would look livid if he didn’t look so shocked. “What was that for?!”

“It’s a snowball, that’s what you do with them. Well actually you’re supposed to throw them at people, but you were too close,” the owl explains, grinning widely. 

“I hate you,” Dederick growls, leaning over to better brush the snow out of his hair.

“Last night says otherwise,” the owl says, giving him a friendly thump on the back.

Dederick just growls again in response. Even bent over, the owl is decently sure that he can see Dederick turning slightly red. 

He’s about to scoop up another handful of snow when he is suddenly aware that something isn’t right. Someone has come into the forest without knocking. In a single heartbeat he is in the air, spiraling up above the trees and gliding across their tops, moving like an arrow through the snowy sky to where he is suddenly, breathtakingly aware that Adelais' family has just entered his forest. 

He drops through the trees right in front of them, landing in his tree armor from when he first met the wolves, his staff in one hand, knees bent and his free hand on the ground in front of him. When he looks up, rising to stand, he sees a group of humans, all armed with bows or poleaxes or swords. Everything is sharp and deadly, and the old man in the lead has a bow leveled at the owl’s head. 

“This is my forest,” he says. “Not yours. You didn’t ask to enter.”

“I see no reason to,” the man says. “We’re all the same kind, are we not?”

“I’m not a hunter,” the owl says. “And not a shifter either. I’m not your kind.” 

“He’s been harboring the wolves,” a woman says. There is something about her face that reminds him of Adelais. “Reasoning with him won’t do a thing.”

“Owl, please.” Adelais has stepped out from behind the group. Her bow is down and un-notched. There is an angry set to her face, and her voice sounds desperate. “We’re just going to ask them to leave.” 

The owl doesn’t want the wolves to leave. He wouldn’t mind having Adelais back from her family either. 

“You’re going to hurt them,” the owl says. “You’re a little bit too heavily armed to have a chat with them. Or, my mistake – was this just a tea party that you bring weapons to?” 

Across the forest, he can feel the wolves start to stir, no doubt woken up by Dederick. What he doesn’t expect is when some of them start moving towards them, not away. 

_No, no, run away_ , the owl knows they can’t hear, but he keeps repeating it. _Run away, don’t come here, it’s not safe_. 

“They’re dangerous,” the old man says. “I’m surprised you let them shelter here in the first place.”

“They’re my friends,” the owl says. “And you need to leave.”

“I don’t think so,” the man says, and when he starts walking forward the owl throws his arms wide, staff clutched tightly in his hand, calling to the wind and the forest and whoever will listen to protect the trees and the wolves. 

When he opens his eyes, the man has stopped, a curious expression on his face. There, on the snow, is a line of dark grey powder, running as far as the owl can see in either direction. 

For a moment there is absolute silence, snowflakes falling and melting on his arms, getting caught in his hair, on his eyelashes, and then he blinks and people fly into action. 

“Go see how far this goes!” The old man barks, and the group behind him splits into two, each group following the line in a different direction. Adelais stays behind though, gripping her bow so hard that her knuckles are white. 

“Adelais,” the old man says, “go help.”

“I –“ she looks back and forth, for a way out. “I don’t know-“

The old man’s face is hard as he stares at her, and then he stalks off after one group. The minute he’s gone Adelais relaxes, tucks her bow into her quiver, and steps up to the line, the fear and the hurt erased from her face. She’d been acting a part, deceiving her own family. 

“Are they coming?” She asks. 

“Yeah,” the owl says. “But you can’t cross, I can’t break this line right now.”

“That’s fine,” Adelais says, and she shifts her gaze to look past the owl as the others come crashing through the trees. Or rather, as Dederick and Scoti come crashing through. 

“Adelais!” Scoti says, and skids to a halt with his toes touching the line, holding up his hands like he wants to grab her, but he falters and draws his arms back, almost as if he’s been burned. 

“Scoti, it’s fine, you have to run,” she says, and there is a catch in her voice, just for a brief moment. There is snow collecting in her dark hair. 

“I’m not leaving without you,” Scoti says, fierce and fast, his eyes sharp. 

“You have to,” she says. “I’ll come find you one day, I promise. Where the seas meet, right?” Scoti just nods, desperately and shaking.

“We have to go,” Dederick says. “Now. Owl, can you break the ash for us?”

“Away from the hunters,” the owl says. “I can tell where they are.”

“Lead on,” Dederick says, and just as the owl sheds his human skin for flight he hears Adelais behind him. 

“I’ll find your name for you!” She yells, and the owl remembers her map. The owl would be happy, but for right now he is just Owl, and he has to get these wolves – these friends, this family – to safety. 

He lands clear across the forest, with the wolves running along under him, and the hunters as far away as possible. The rest of the pack is waiting, slinking and quiet in their wolf shapes, except for Lydia, who stands still, the red of her fur bright against the pack and the snow. The owl settles down on a rock for the briefest of moments before he is human again, sprinting the last bit to the line, knowing that he minute he breaks it the wolves have to run and that every second the hunters are getting closer. 

He’s so surprised when a human hand grabs him that he stumbles for a moment, but the hand keeps him steady and upright, and when he turns around he sees it’s Dederick, face set and stony. 

“We have to-“ he starts.

“I know,” the owl interrupts. “It’s fine, I know.” 

“No it’s not,” he says, his voice rough, and he pulls the owl in, hands on either side of his face, their foreheads pressed together. 

“You have to be safe,” the owl says. “That’s what matters.”

“You need to keep safe as well.”

“I’ll be fine. I’m a winged badass, remember?”

Dederick rumbles out something that might be a laugh, but it’s harsh and broken. The owl pulls back far enough to press a fierce kiss to Dederick’s forehead. 

“Time to go!” One of the pack shouts, and the owl nods, stepping back and then turning around, walking to the ash. Even though the snow is coming down fast and heavy the line of ash is unchanged, still sitting unobstructed on top of the snow. The owl closes his eyes, takes in a deep breath, and thinks of the line with a broken spot, just large enough for the wolves and Lydia to get through. When he opens his eyes, the break is there. 

The pack streams through when he steps aside, Dederick last, still human. He stops next to the owl, and they stare at each other for a heartbeat before Dederick drops and runs, his black fur set in stark relief to the snow. The owl is relieved when he vanishes into the storm quickly, and the snow swirls and falls and covers up their tracks. The snow is a blessing. 

“Thank you,” the owl says to the sky, and he knows that the wind will hear him. 

He walks through the forest slowly, knowing, feeling the minute the hunters find the break and stream in among the trees. There’s nothing for them to hurt now, however, and so the owl roosts in the roots of the old tree that he and Dederick had found, his tiny body tucked into a split in the bark. He tucks his beak down into his feathers and watches as the snow comes down harder and harder, until the sky darkens and the snow is piled high against the trees. 

He feels the way the hunters move through the trees, feels their anger as they find nothing. When they finally leave, moving back towards the village, the owl relaxes and closes his eyes, weariness pulling at him, telling him to sleep. 

Slowly, the ash is finally covered by the snow. 

\---

The hunters move on eventually. The villagers will come by sometimes however, following the deer and rabbits that have started to move into the forest. The owl always lets them in, although he stays an owl, watching silently as they track game. 

Sometime later, he’s not quite sure how much later, but spring and summer have come and gone and the leaves are starting to fall again, a woman comes to the forest and doesn’t knock, but calls into the trees instead. 

“I have a message from Adelais!” 

The owl, curious, flies to meet her, landing on a branch low enough that he can look the woman in the eye, and she seems to understand who he is. 

“These hills and mountains are called Stylos,” the woman says. “The forest never had a name, but now the people in the village call it Skogr.”

“Thank you,” the owl says, surprised at the sound of his own voice. The woman smiles, and with a nod she puts her hood back up and goes not in the direction of the village, but towards the mountains instead. 

Skogr sounds angry, but Stylos – the owl like Stylos. 

\---

Eventually, after trees have fallen and new ones have sprung up, as so many seasons have passed that they’ve faded together, the people in what was once a village and is now more of a city start to forget. They no longer knock, and instead come in with axes to take down the trees for building and for firewood. Their old gods become myths and smoky, ill-defined memories, and with that so do their spirits and even the guardians. And so, the owl decides one day that it is time to move on. 

He knows that the pack is long gone, that Scoti and Adelais and Dederick must have returned to the earth years and years ago. Still, it gives him pause, and he shakes a little when he draws in a breath to calm himself. 

The day he decides to leave he wakes as a human, in the roots of what is now truly an ancient tree, and he ghosts his palms across the ground, remember how once Dederick’s cloak had fallen here. He hefts himself up on a gnarled root that once held an imprint of his fingers, now long grown over, and starts his journey. 

He stops at the last tree he passes, pressing his fingertips against the bark. 

“Thank you,” he tells the trees (and the wind), and sets off. He knows he can’t find the pack anymore, but maybe, just maybe, he can find a meadow of tiny blue-purple flowers and a girl with fox colored hair.


End file.
